


It's Dogged As Does It

by merripestin



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Animals, Bird!Moriarty, Dog!Sherlock, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Harm to Animals, Pets, cat!john
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-17
Updated: 2014-07-17
Packaged: 2018-02-09 07:51:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1974852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merripestin/pseuds/merripestin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Next to Sherlock -- aristocratic skull and glossy black coat and really just unfeasibly enormous -- John was small and fuzzy and ginger, with a flat, grumpy little face.  Greg, who knew about John's previous life as an alley cat, petted round John's left ear exactly once, and John showed his appreciation for the affection by not clawing Greg's fingers off.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Dogged As Does It

Greg was woken at 4:19 a.m. by Sherlock thumping up onto the bed.  After a moment there was another, smaller thump on the pillow next to his head.  Greg didn't have to see to know it was the baby lock he had put on the bedroom door the night before.  Sherlock always did that, when he'd defeated a new one.

Greg pawed at the table by his bedside until his hand blundered up against the lamp and turned it on.  Blearily, he peered at his dog.  From this angle, Sherlock's face seemed roughly a yard long, all narrow muzzle broadening just slightly to make room for ice-blue eyes.  "Where the hell do you keep all those brains, boy?" Greg muttered, and stroked the painfully narrow skull, pushing back the long drooped ears and letting them fall again.  Sherlock was a sort of pedigree mutt: there was whippet in there, and greyhound, and afghan hound, and any other sort of posh dog so high-bred and high-strung that it practically vibrated at a frequency that -- well -- that only dogs could hear.

Sherlock, with a smug little whuff, settled himself on the bed, long elegant feet crossed, long refined head uptilted, clearly self-satisfied at his victory.  It was actually bloody impressive, Greg thought; the locks were meant to be proof against _hands_ , even if only weak clumsy baby-sized hands.  Sherlock managed with paws and jaws alone.

Greg had more or less given up on sole rights to the bedroom and resigned himself to the canine alarm clock.  These days he only put the baby locks on the door when he had a day off from his work at the Met -- rare enough -- and was after a lie in.  This one had lasted -- what? -- four?  Yeah.  Four mornings total he'd been allowed to sleep past six.  This was how it always went wrong though; when Sherlock did work out a new lock, he always managed to do it well before six.  Greg reckoned it was deliberate.

He had installed a proper dutch bolt on the inside of the bedroom door, but he'd used it exactly once.  Sherlock had barked monotonously for hours until Greg opened up, and had been offended and sulky (sulkier than usual) for a week after.  The baby locks Sherlock seemed to respect as a challenge.

There was another, smaller thump at about the level of Greg's feet, and then John walked unevenly up the bed, nosed at Greg's arm once, rubbed his jaw against Sherlock's muzzle twice, and then sat down and gave a single creaky miaow, staring at Greg intently.  Next to Sherlock -- aristocratic skull and glossy black coat and really just unfeasibly enormous -- John was small and fuzzy and pale-ginger, with a flat, grumpy little face.  Greg, who knew about John's previous life as an alley cat, petted round John's left ear exactly once, and John showed his appreciation for the affection by not clawing Greg's fingers off.   And made a longer creaky noise.  Sherlock huffed softly and put his clammy nose to Greg's jaw. 

" _Eugh_ , _gerroff_. All right, all right.  You win," Greg said, shoving Sherlock away and rolling himself towards the side of the bed, slow with morning aches.

Sherlock jumped up and walked to the door, then looked back and waited for John to follow.  John would never totally lose his limp, but he moved quickly with the promise of an early breakfast.

Greg scrubbed his hands through his own hair and scratched at his stubble and wandered after them.  When he took too long, Sherlock sometimes came back and tried to lead him to the kitchen, as if afraid Greg had forgotten the way.

 *

Sherlock had not been to blame for the end of Greg's marriage.  Linda had made it very clear that it wasn't Sherlock she objected to.  Which was hard to believe, really, because Sherlock was damned objectionable.  Sherlock made chaos of the house.  He was messy and destructive and occasionally a bit aggressive, which was a real problem in a dog that eventually grew to stand higher than Greg's waist.  He was whippet thin, partly because he was part whippet, and partly because he was so damned finicky about food, except when he suddenly and inexplicably decided to eat all of theirs.  And there appeared to be nothing he couldn't get into, given enough time.

What Linda had objected to about Sherlock was the fact that Greg had agreed to take him without asking her.

"Look, I'll take care of him -- food and walks and -- " he'd argued.

"That's not how pets work, Greg.  That's not how households work.  That's not how marriage works."

Greg had been vaguely thinking that a dog would be a good thing to have for the kids, when they had kids.

Kids had been another thing he hadn't talked to Linda about.

So, yeah, it hadn't been Sherlock's fault.  It had been Greg with his mind on the job and just assuming he knew how everything else worked.   And he knew she was frightened -- knowing that she'd be lucky if he managed to die of old age.  Who'd be a policeman's wife?

Probably these days he was better friends with Linda than he'd ever been.  She rang him up every other week or so and mostly he told her the story of Sherlock's newest exploit and she laughed, and that was nice.

It would be even nicer to have a reason other than a day off to need to lock Sherlock out of the bedroom, though.

*

Greg poured dry dogfood and catfood into two bowls.  John tucked right into his own with enthusiasm and concentration, only pausing to back off when Sherlock nibbled a little catfood from his dish.  Sherlock took one bite from his own bowl and then gave Greg a mournful disappointed look.  Greg just shrugged.  He'd long since given up on finding something Sherlock would deign to eat on a regular basis.  There had been months of trying every type of food, and it never helped, so now Sherlock got a bit of dry in the morning and a bit of wet in the evening, and tablescraps when he showed any interest.

Outside the window, there was a shrill ahh- _ahh_ -ahh- _ahh_ sound, like the opening of _Somewhere Over the Rainbow_ drawn out endlessly.  That fucking bird had learned to imitate a police siren now.

When John had crunched his way through most of his food, Sherlock started flipping round pebbles of dogfood out of his bowl with a paw.  John chased each one as it skidded round the kitchen, bouncing off appliances, and then when he'd caught it, munched it up.

They both seemed to suddenly tire of the game at the same moment and ambled off together into the sitting room.  They ignored Greg.  Sherlock generally demanded a walk at seven, but for the moment Greg was surplus to requirements.

* 

Having a pet had shaped Greg's life, changed things in little ways.  Having to come home and see to the dog every day had meant Greg never totally lost touch.  His hours were long -- Linda said ridiculously long -- but even if he ended up sleeping at his desk, he'd have taken half an hour sometime in the evening to run home to feed and walk Sherlock.  He might have missed the signs, if not for that, might not have seen how unhappy Linda was.  The marriage might have dragged on; there might have been affairs and secrets and lies.

For the first few months after they'd separated, Greg had been frustrated and yeah, resentful of Sherlock, who seemed to get ever more destructive as he grew out of the last of his puppyhood. 

Nicki, his vet, suggested obedience training.  (Sally, his sergeant, suggested an exorcism.) But from the list Nicki gave him, the only class with times he could attend and a price he could afford was in a room full of other dogs. 

Sherlock did not get on with other dogs.  The way Sherlock did not get on with other dogs was _spectacular_.  Their single visit to a dog park had ended up on somebody's YouTube, with _Carmina Burana_ as the video soundtrack.  And that had been when Sherlock was still growing.

So Greg had begged Molly for help.

Molly Hooper worked over in forensics, quiet and cheerful among the dead bodies.  One day, waiting for a corpse to be rolled out, she'd mentioned her cat, and he'd told her one of the better Sherlock stories, the one about why Greg never _ever_ smoked anymore.  And after that they were sort of friends. 

It turned out Molly volunteered most of her free time at an animal shelter, and she was good with both cats and dogs.

When Greg brought Sherlock in, she led them to a room at the back where she called Sherlock a _beautiful boy_ and made much of him, while Sherlock sat up regally, occasionally eyeing Greg as if to check whether he was observing the proper approach to admiring a dog.  When Greg told her about how the day before Sherlock had eaten an entire frozen pizza, while it was still frozen, she'd said, "Well, you can't leave things out to thaw -- "

"He got it from _in the freezer_ , Molly.  And he left the door open."

"He is a big boy," Molly had said, petting Sherlock's silky ears.  Sherlock raised his head and did his best Noble Hound pose.

"And he then tore the box to bits and left them round the whole house."

Molly had just smiled, and then proceeded to give Sherlock what she called the _Doggy IQ Test_.  It involved hiding things under blankets and having him sit with a biscuit balanced on his nose and  other little tricks.  Sherlock had done the first few easily, and then started ignoring her and instead sat trying to tear a hole in the blanket.

"Sherlock, give Molly the blanket," Greg had said.

With a glare, Sherlock had dragged the blanket back over to her.

"Greg," Molly had said, slight edge in her voice, "Does he bring you other things, at home?"

"Some, yeah.  Look, Sherlock, bring me the paper."  Sherlock had looked around, found a paper on a chair by one wall, and carried it over.

"Oh, good boy," Molly had exclaimed, and gone from happy to absurdly incandescent as Sherlock proved he could bring also a ball, a bowl, a set of keys, and-- once Greg had taken it off and, at Molly's insistence hidden it in the blanket and then under a plastic pail under a chair -- a shoe.

"He's bored, Greg," Molly had told him, stroking Sherlock lovingly.  "You've got long hours, he sits home with nothing to do.  He's clever enough to be a service animal or a sheepdog or something.  He needs something to keep him busy.  Maybe if you got another dog…"

Greg groaned and covered his eyes.  Sherlock could now just about be trusted to ignore other dogs in public, as long as they didn't get too close or presume to make eye contact.  He shook his head.  "Anyhow, turns out I've had doggy Einstein on me hands all this time," Greg said, bemused.  "Too bad he can't talk.  I'd bring him in on cases."  Not that Sally would stand for that.

Sherlock, getting bored, jumped up onto a chair and started trying to claw down a poster of a fluffy collie on a green field.  "Sherlock," Molly called, "down."

Sherlock looked back at her enquiringly, as if curious to see how she planned on getting him to do what she said. 

"Sherlock, clever boy, find the bowl again," she said.  "Can you bring Greg the bowl?"

Sherlock hopped down and started nosing in the box where she'd put the various props and toys, pulling out the bowl after a moment and bringing it up to Greg.

Greg told him what a good boy he was, but his attention was on Molly.  "You're amazing at --" Greg flapped his hand around the room, "all this."

"I did nearly decide to train as a vet," Molly said, brightly.

Greg stared at the pretty little woman with her mousy hair and soft cardigan.  She _looked_ like a veterinarian.  Or like the sort of teacher you'd want in year one, who'd read to you and maybe hug you if you were having a bad day. 

"But instead… forensic pathology," he said.

"Mm."  She nodded.  "Well, it's the same kind of thing, really, isn't it?  Taking care of those who can't speak for themselves."  She stroked Sherlock's head and her fingers skimmed against Greg's.

 *

It was ten to six in the morning, and knowing he wouldn't get back to sleep now, Greg made himself a cuppa and sat at the kitchen table.  Outside, the bird stopped being a siren and went back to, _I will burn you_ , which was its favourite.  It was also good at _Am I bovvered?_ and _Exterminate!_ and something like the music from _Countdown_.     

All its phrases that didn't seem to come off the telly had a definite Irish accent, which Greg reckoned meant that somewhere round here there was an Irish bloke who spent most of his nights home, yelling and watching telly, and was now wondering what to do with all this bloody birdseed.

The bird had shown up nearly a month ago, and quickly become the talk of the street.  At first, people had laughed about it, and mostly argued about whether it was a parrot or a macaw or something else.  But by this time, all anybody did was complain about the noise.  It picked sounds up quickly, and repeated them endlessly, loudly, all day and most of the night.

Some people had complained to Greg, who'd protested that he didn't do animal crime, but he'd asked Molly.  She'd given him the official line from the RSPCA, which was that they didn't come out just because of noise.

"Don't worry," she'd told him, "you'd be amazed how well parrots and things seem to adapt here.  They even teach native wild birds -- "

"I'm not worried about the blighter, Molls.  Thing's a nuisance.  And probably the owner wants it back."

"I'm afraid they'd only come out if it's been injured."

"Right, well, that could be arranged," Greg had said, not meaning it.  But Molly had ended the call soon after that.

As Greg finished his tea, the bird got stuck on a loop of _Burn you, burn, burn you, burn you, burn, burn_. 

*

Greg had taken shameless advantage of Molly's soft spot for Sherlock, and brought him by to see her at the shelter every couple of weeks.  Molly would set him a bunch of tasks and never seemed to get tired of praising him.  Sherlock had always been a bit better behaved for a day or so after, so Greg supposed it counted as a sort of obedience training.

One weekend, she'd left him to wait for her for a moment.  In the room on a desk had been set one of those little pet carriers, and Greg assumed it was empty until Sherlock started nosing at it.  After a moment's sniffing he'd huffed, blinked his cool blue eyes several times as if confused, and started dancing around, bouncing a little and pushing at the catch with his nose.

Greg had pushed him back and looked inside through the metal mesh of the door.  On a ratty towel there lay a cat, such pale ginger its stripes were nearly yellow.  On one leg it was wearing a bright pink cast, and it had a white plastic cone round its neck.  It raised its head and blinked at Greg, then put its head down again.  There were scratches across its face and a long line down its side had been shaved around a line of stitches. 

"You've been in the wars, me lad, haven't you?"  Greg said.

"Someone brought him in off the street," Molly said, coming in.  "He's a tough little guy.  But they nearly didn't cast his leg.  He's pretty tame, but nobody wants to take an adult ginger with a bad leg and they're always over-full as it is."

"Poor little bastard," Greg sighed, and pushed Sherlock back from the carrier again.  Sherlock whined.

"Unless you -- " Molly said.  She looked so pretty and hopeful.  So Greg had known why he'd been left in the room with the carrier. 

"Molly, I've enough trouble dealing with Sherlock.  And you know how he is with other animals.  Look at this."  Sherlock had been sticking his nose against the front of the carrier again.

The ginger raised up a little bit and reached out one foot, baring claws, and yawned at him.  Bravado, Greg reckoned. 

"It could be good for him -- you know, stimulating -- "

Greg had shaken his head.  "Molly, I'm sorry, but no."

* 

Greg was showered and feeling much better when Sherlock carried over his lead.  Oddly enough, Sherlock had never been difficult about being leashed for a walk.  Greg sort of reckoned Sherlock thought the lead was there to make sure _Greg_ didn't get lost.

They went out into a storm of, _You're a cunt!  You're a cunt!  Burn, burn, I will burn you, burn, burn you!_   Greg really hoped the bird's owner had just thought it was funny to teach it to be vulgar, and he wasn't hearing a living recording of some household abuse.

Sherlock, as usual, raised his head and growled at the bird.   Most animals in the area had learned to avoid Sherlock.  But the fucking bird seemed to enjoy making the big dog angry.  Twice it had actually swooped down into the back garden when Sherlock was out there, divebombing straight at Sherlock's head in a blur while Sherlock snapped at the attacker.  By the time Greg had run out, it had been gone again. 

Today it was just practicing its noises, but it followed them for the whole of the walk so they were never out of range of the noise.  As usual Greg tried to get a proper look at it, looking for something bright-coloured and tropical up somewhere high, but he never did see the thing.  It ended with a long, long chorus of siren noises which Greg only partially blocked out when he shut the door behind them.

John had been sitting in the window by the door waiting for them, which he didn't always do, and when Sherlock was off the lead, he twined his little ginger body among Sherlock's glossy black legs, rubbing up against him.  After that John settled with Sherlock, curled up on the chair that Greg had bought with the express intention that it be all for him and no pets allowed.  Of course they'd claimed it the minute it came through the door.

Sherlock sat there making a vague huffing noise and shifted his long legs on the chair.  John, curled tight and nearly spherical, made long interrogative creaking noises until Sherlock stilled.

The damned bird was putting everyone off.

 *

A few weeks after Molly's first attempt at matchmaking with the cat, she'd shown up at his door with the carrier.

"Molly -- "

"Greg, I really think it would be good for Sherlock."

Sherlock had sniffed at the carrier, and then started making little wuffing noises, lowering his front end and then bouncing up again.

"Christ," Greg had complained.  "Look at this, he reckons you've brought dinner."

"We could at least -- "

"Molly, no."

Molly had held the carrier higher so he could look.  The ginger cat had lost the cast and its fur was growing back in, but it was still wearing the white plastic cone and lying on its side.  It looked at Greg briefly, then shut its eyes again.

"Poor little blighter," Greg had said, "At least your leg's getting better."

"He's going to be fine.  But we just don't have the room for him and --"

"You take him then."

"I _can't_ , Greg.  Toby's FIV, remember?"

"Better infected than -- "

"Come on, let's see how he is with Sherlock.  Please?"  Her pretty eyes had started tearing up.

"Molls, come on.  Here."  He'd taken the carrier from her and put it in the bedroom with the door shut, hoping Sherlock wouldn't manage to get in for the next few minutes, and given Molly a  glass of wine and then a hug, and started wondering if it was going to turn into a kiss, when he'd heard a yowl from the bedroom.

So much for hope then.  He'd raced in to find that not only had Sherlock managed the door in what, even for him, had to be a new record, he'd also somehow got the cat carrier open and had the ginger cat by the throat on the floor.

"No!  Bad!  Sherlock stop!"  Greg had bellowed.

Sherlock had ignored him, shaking his head briskly and then suddenly  pulling back.  Greg had been in midlunge, and stumbled, thinking he was about to see blood and a dead cat.

Sherlock had pulled off the white cone.

The little ginger cat had got to his feet  hesitantly, staring all the time at the huge dog.  Eventually he had limped over to Sherlock's front leg and rubbed his chin against Sherlock's fur.

Sherlock had put down his head and the ginger cat had rubbed his jaw against Sherlock's muzzle, which was big enough to enclose the cat's entire head if he'd been of a mind.  The cat had purred three long gusty purrs.

Sherlock, preening, had licked the cat's head.

The purr had stopped; the cat had flicked its ears irritably, and then it had limped over to the corner of Greg's bedroom and curled up.  

Sherlock had followed and settled himself next to the little creature.

"Okay, you don't think he's dinner," Greg had said.  "You, what, think he's your puppy?"

Sherlock was remarkably good at picking out mockery in the tone of Greg's voice.  He'd rearranged himself so his back was to Greg and sat, staring at the cat.

"We've been calling him Johnny," Molly had told him.

 *

Greg shared a wall with a young couple, Yvonne and Pete.  They more or less got on.  They sometimes complained a bit about Sherlock, but not much, because being a police officer had a bit of intimidation built into it, no good pretending.  Probably they smoked the occasional joint and didn't want Greg paying too much attention.

One morning, though, Pete caught him coming out.  "Look, Mr. Lestrade, I'm sorry, but -- "

"Greg, Pete," he said, as he had said every time they'd met, "please."

"It's your dog.  Look, it's not his fault, but that bird sits outside your window and teases him.  Yvonne's working on her portfolio, and -- "

"Look, we tried to catch the bird.  It will probably -- "

"Did you know it does your voice?"

"What, the bird does?"  It was a bizarre, and weirdly flattering idea, that it had picked _his_ voice out.

"Yeah.  Yvonne recorded it on her mobile, because I didn't believe it."

"Look, I'll ask again about seeing something gets done, but I'd love to hear that recording sometime."

When he got home, the sitting room was a shambles, and not just the usual superficial mess made by a big dog venting its boredom on the furniture.  Sherlock had broken a lamp, which hadn't happened since Greg took John in, and he'd also managed to break two shelves, or at least the brackets holding them in place, so a load of books and DVDs and CDs were spilled in a heap, with several of the disks scattered far and wide across the carpet.

Now Sherlock was lying on the couch, stretched across the full length, though two of the cushions were knocked to the floor.  As Greg walked in, the dog's blue eye just rolled in its socket to look at him mournfully, but not a paw moved.  John walked out from behind the couch, fixed Greg briefly with an intense, demanding look, and then walked off into the kitchen.

"Don't know what you want me to do about him, mate," Greg muttered.  "You're meant to be his, whatever, therapy animal."

Sometimes Greg couldn't help feeling like his pets understood every word he said, but he knew if they did, the both of them would have shown their annoyance over that comment.  John didn't turn around, and Sherlock continued to do his impression of a dog with no bones who'd been dumped on a couch by some cruel fate.

When he went next door -- as good a way as any to put off cleaning up the mess -- Pete gave him a bit of the story.  The bird had been at it again, doing impressions of sirens, and then Greg's voice just outside the window until Sherlock was barking the place down.

The recorded voice on Yvonne's mobile wasn't as impressive as he'd expected, after all this.  It had been recorded through the window, at a distance, of course, and probably the mic wasn't great.  It was tinny, and weak.  "Sherlock, Sherlock, come here," it said.  "Sherlock, come here, Sherlock, Sherlock." 

"Doesn't sound that much like me," he said.  It was deeper than he'd expect a bird to be able to get, but he'd never mistake it for a person.

"It's got your intonation down, though," Pete said.

Greg supposed it did.  And maybe that was enough to drive a dog mad.

"It was calling him a bad dog, today," Pete put in.

And that was fucking weird, because Greg wasn't sure he'd ever said that where the bird could hear.  He said, "No," to Sherlock a hell of a lot, but mostly these days he just cursed the big dog under his breath, because _bad dog_ is something you'd say to a dog you thought was going to listen, and god knew that wasn't Sherlock.

Something had to be done though, so he called Molly again, and frankly begged her to come out. 

In the end, he took advantage of her soft spot for Sherlock, described the dog lying on the couch as dejected and depressed, instead of sulking and lazy, which was the truth.

The next afternoon they met at his place.  He'd cleared up the bits of lamp and replaced the little brackets for the shelves with nails, which worked as long as the stuff on the shelves was pretty well balanced.

Along with Molly was a plump little guy with a lot of acne scars.  "Chege," he introduced himself, "I'm the bird guy.  So, parrot?"

"Um," said Greg,  "I don't actually know.  I mean, mostly I don't see it, just hear.”

"African grey, could be," Chege said to Molly.

"I heard it in the garden earlier," Greg said, and led Chege out, while Molly settled in to pet Sherlock.  Sherlock allowed it, but his pale eyes rotated to watch Greg go out the kitchen door into the back garden.

The thing did its Dalek impression twice as they came out, and Chege turned, looked, frowned, looked some more.  It took until the bird had got stuck on, "Burn, burn," before he pointed, smiling a little. 

"Mynah," Chege pronounced.

No wonder Greg hadn't got a proper look at it before.  He'd been sure it had to look like a parrot, something big with a long tail and a down-pointing beak and bright as a jewel.  But this looked like any songbird to him.  He didn't know anything about birds and if someone pointed this black and grey thing out and told him it was a finch or a sparrow, he'd not have known any better.

Greg went in and watched from the kitchen as Chege tried to catch the little bastard.

He tried tempting it down with food first, which didn't work at all.  After that, the bird screamed at him a lot and flew about from perch to perch, totally out of range of the net. 

After about an hour, Chege had gone from laconic and patient to shouting abuse.  He’d not had much of an accent up until then, but anger sent him very Brixton.  He went on muttering angrily all the time after he came in and Greg handed him a cuppa.  The bird sat outside the kitchen window and said _Am I bovvered?  Am I bovvered?  Am I bovvered?_ several hundred times until Chege stalked out the front door with Molly following.  After that, the bird made a sound Greg just couldn't convince himself wasn't laughter, and followed that up with a chorus of _I will burn you_ until Greg closed the curtains and turned on the stereo to drown out the noise. 

He was starting to think the right answer really was just someone with a gun.  Tranquilizer darts, of course, because Greg wouldn't hurt an animal if it could be helped, but the bird, like Sherlock, was clearly too clever for anybody's sanity.

 *

Yvonne called him, because Pete was at work when it happened.  She hadn't really seen it either, just heard, came out when it was over. It was just an ugly muddle, like any traffic incident.

Easy to think of pets as things, toys that only run when you're there.  But if you worked, if you were gone for hours every day, then your pets lived lives that you didn't know, in a house that was maybe more theirs than yours.  Greg had sort of known that, about Sherlock and John, that their lives carried on when he wasn't watching.  He'd cleaned up enough of the evidence, yeah, but there was also the way they were about each other, the easy way they moved in tandem and the little squalls of temper, parts of an understanding that had mostly grown up when he wasn't there to see.

The kid might as well have had it stamped across his face, when Greg got to the veterinary office.  He was standing there, looking scared and guilty and miserable, watching the door. 

Greg ignored him, went past the desk and on through.  The nearest office to his house happened to be Nicki, Greg's usual vet.  Sherlock had only actually bitten her twice, when she'd given him shots.  Greg had never been sure if she actually liked Sherlock, or if it was just part of being a vet to be cheerful about everybody's nasty pets.

Sherlock looked sunken and smaller.  His glossy coat had somehow gone dull and ragged-looking.  They'd got him wrapped up in bandages and a cast.

"Christ," Greg said.  It hurt, seeing his oversized horrorshow of a dog like this.

"Other than the leg, nothing else actually broken," Nicki told him.  "Pretty badly scraped up, needed some stitches.  We'll need to keep him -- well, knowing Sherlock, best keep him still and quiet as long as we can."

So Greg agreed to drugging up his dog for the next week and finally went out to talk to the kid.

He was maybe twenty, wearing a red tee shirt with an artificially faded Van Halen logo, and skintight jeans and chunky glasses.  His hair was so perfectly shaggy all over it had to be deliberate.  It was obvious somebody told him the guy whose dog he hit was a cop; he was practically pissing down his leg.

"Mr., um, Lestrade?"  he asked.  Adenoids.

"Just, tell me what happened."

"I'm so sorry -- "

"Just tell me," Greg said wearily.

"I don't even really know.  He was just there, all of a sudden.  I think he was, I don't know,  chasing something?   He -- I think he tried to jump over my car, but -- "

It was painful, extracting himself from the conversation.  He didn't want to punish the kid. If the boy had been driving too fast down the little street outside Greg's door, Sherlock would be hurt a lot worse than he was.  And he'd taken Sherlock straight to the vet.  He was probably a good kid.  But Greg had to stifle the urge to punch him in those trendy ugly glasses and got out of there as fast as he could.

He thanked Yvonne, when he got home, and told her Sherlock would probably be okay, and got out of that conversation as fast as possible too.

It was the back door.  Standing wide open.  That's how Sherlock had got out.  

There was a thumb lock above the knob.  It would take strength to turn, but it was big enough to knock round with a paw or jaws.  The knob itself was at just the right distance from the doorframe that it could be turned by wedging a long head in between them and pushing down;  that was just the same arrangement as the knob on Greg's bedroom door, where Greg had caught Sherlock doing it once or twice. 

Sherlock could have got through this door whenever he liked, and it had never even occurred to Greg.

Once he was in the back garden, it was just a matter of getting up on one of the chairs Greg kept out there and Sherlock could jump over the fence easily enough. Sherlock had been chasing something into the street.  Greg shut the door and couldn't help thinking that the sodding bird knew.  It knew Sherlock could get out and it had just kept teasing at him until he gave in.

After realizing about the door, it finally occurred to Greg to wonder what had happened to John.

The cat wasn't in the house.  It was evening by now, and Greg went out with a torch, and, eventually, a tin of tuna, to beg the little bastard to come back.  He only gave up after the second time a skittish stray, who looked nothing like John, was tempted by the fish. 

John had been an alley cat to begin with.  He was a tough little tom who'd scratch you as soon as look at you.  He was probably fine.

Greg went to bed feeling like his stomach had been sliced right out of him.  And thinking that the person who first came up with the idea of pets should have been fucking punched in the head.  You made these things part of your life, knowing that maybe, if you were lucky, what you'd watch them die of was old age, but pretty much guaranteed you'd watch them die of something.  Who'd take on something with an expiration date?   Who'd own a pet?

Most of the night he stared up, trying not to think, and when he did sleep, it left him feeling smothered and sick in the morning.

Not putting out food when he got up felt weirdly callous.  Everything was off-kilter, which was ridiculous.  He was a grown man.  He had a life.  And it wasn't as if anyone had actually died, not as far as he knew.

He hadn't wanted to call Molly last night, and he didn't want to call her this morning.  It was probably odd that he felt so strongly that he _should_. She would cry.  He was pretty sure she was going to cry.  He didn't want to deal with that.

He left early, so he could check at the vet's before work, and the moment he opened the front door, something streaked past his feet and disappeared into the dark under his liquor cabinet. 

It didn't come close to tripping him, but Greg felt unbalanced all the same.  He got down on hands and knees to peer in underneath.  It was hard to see, but Greg knew his own cat. 

"Oh you little bastard.  Thank god."

There was a worrying smear on the carpet where John had pushed himself under the edge of the cabinet.  Could be dirt, but could be mostly-dry blood.  When Greg tried to reach under for him, John hissed, swiped with a claw, but all while squashing himself harder back against the wall. 

"All right, mate.  All right.  Message received."  Greg got out the tuna from the refrigerator and left it on a plate in front of the cabinet, and this time got out the door feeling loads better.

There was a mess on the pavement in front.  Black feathers and gore, spread over a surprising area.

Cats killed birds.  That was just nature.  Nothing more to it.  Surely nothing more.

Greg stepped over the mess, and couldn't help smiling.  There was birdsong in the air, and it all sounded like _chirp, chirp, chirp_ to Greg.

 *

Molly did cry a bit, and checked up on Sherlock almost as often as Greg did.  It was almost a week before Sherlock looked mostly like himself, aside from the cast, and the shaved, stitched spots, and the slow, dopey look.  When Greg would sit with him, Sherlock would lick his wrist and sometimes try to stuff his head into Greg's jacket pocket and pull out his badge or his keys, which he hadn't done since he was a puppy.  "Who's a stoned doggy then? " Greg teased him, and stroked his ears.

He was more worried about John, by then.  The cat now seemed to live under the liquor cabinet.  The can of tuna had got eaten, but nothing since.   When Greg tried reaching in, John let himself be petted.  He'd even let Greg drag him out, limp and unresisting, so Greg had checked him over, and he seemed fine except for some scratches on his head and back.  But when he was left alone the cat crawled back into the dark and just lay there.

 *

Molly helped him bring Sherlock home.  Sherlock could walk short distances by then, wobbly on his long legs as a baby deer.  Halfway between the car and the door he stopped.  Molly crouched down to pet him.  "That's all right.  Stop and rest if you need to.  Good boy."

Greg thought that actually, Sherlock was sniffing at the pavement where a bird had recently been eviscerated by a very angry cat.  It had been rained on twice since, but that's certainly what it looked like Sherlock was doing.

Sherlock took three tries to get up onto his accustomed place on the couch, and glared at Greg, as if Greg had deliberately made it higher in his absence.  Then he looked around, huffed out a little bark, another, whined.

"Poor thing," Molly soothed, petting him.

Greg, who was watching for it, saw John come round the side of the couch.  The little tom went up on his back legs, front paws on the couch cushion.  The dog and the cat stared at each other.  John sniffed Sherlock's nearest paw several times, suspiciously, and then he abruptly turned his back and stalked away.  Sherlock blinked, tilted his head and whined again.

John walked off to the kitchen where he began crunching away at his previously untouched kibble.

 *

There were several weeks of Sherlock limping around the house after a cat who pointedly got up and walked away every time the dog came near.  Though Greg did notice that John never seemed to go up the stairs Sherlock's leg couldn't handle, except to wake Greg up in the morning.  Sherlock for a while became again the neurotic dog who chewed up books and the charger cable for Greg's mobile.

One day, after some unobserved daytime détente, he noticed they'd started playing again.  By the time Sherlock's was walking easily, they'd sometimes curl up together.

But it was a long time before they managed to settle in again to the way they had been, to what seemed to happen easily, immediately, the first time.

 *

 Greg was woken at 6:02 by Sherlock jumping up onto the bed and thumping himself down pointedly right in the middle.  Sherlock insinuated his long muzzle between the two pillows and made a noise that sounded sort of like a polite cough.

Greg groaned, "Leave it out, mate."

"Is he allowed on the bed?"  Molly asked, her voice sleep-blurred.

"Allowed isn't a concept Sherlock seems to understand."  But actually, as he hadn't put any lock on the door the night before -- he'd had other things on his mind -- Greg reckoned he'd been let off easy.

"Sherlock, down," Molly ordered firmly.

Sherlock rolled his belly towards her, stretching, and she sighed and petted him a bit.

John landed just behind Molly's pillow and sauntered up, wedging himself in to share the warm spot in the middle of the bed.  He made his usual creaking sounds at Greg, but when Molly stroked his ears, he purred for a moment before shaking her off.

Molly, gazing at the two of them, smiled, looking both girlishly happy and messy in a way that made Greg want to grab her and start kissing her all over again.  They might just have time before she went back to her own flat to see to her own cat, something he knew she would never, ever put off even ten minutes.

"Aww," Molly crooned.  "Do you boys want your breakfast?  You _do_.  Yes, I know you _do_."

And as Greg was pouring out kibble as fast as humanly possible, because that was the only way to get the two bastards out of his bedroom, he was certain that Sherlock and John were smirking at him.

*

end


End file.
